Today is a good day to contemplate what Viking Logarta wrote in a letter to the editor in last Sunday’s issue of Cebu Daily News. This was written in reply to lawyer Rex Fernandez’s opinion on Solita Monsod’s earlier column defending Dean Enrique Avila of the University of the Philippines in Cebu and protesting his dismissal. The case is now under review by the UP Board of Regents. In that letter, Logarta made the assertion that Solita Monsod and this writer, both professors of the university, know exactly what they are doing and understand the extent of risks they are taking when they write in defense of Avila.
In their essays both Fernandez and Logarta raised the legal principle of sub judice. Logarta for his part referred to UP’s university code and raised the possibility it might have provisions that inhibit a teacher from publicly criticizing the university especially in writing. The Maker found both essays immediately disturbing even as he read it. The principle of sub judice and the University Code are areas he would have to read up on if only he were so inclined. As it is, he is too much caught up reading two books by Umberto Eco entitled “On Beauty” and “On Ugliness,” wonderful books that are as pleasurable to read as wonderful to understand. Does the Maker know exactly what risks he is taking by getting involved in the case of Dean Enrique Avila?
Once, many years ago, the Maker was appointed to his first stint (he had two) as chairman of the Humanities Division of UP Cebu. He had under him a member of the fine arts faculty who grew up and earned his degree in another country. He taught only for a few years and in that short time they became close friends. He was an excellent teacher for the fine arts program but despite, or is it perhaps because of this, he drew the constant ire of a few other faculty members. He decided eventually to quit. But this was for various reasons, some of which were entirely personal. But in his final assessment of the problems of the school he concluded, “Nobody in the university is responsible for anything.”
This was an assessment steeped in irony but unfortunately quite accurate. Indeed, the university is a huge monstrous beast of a bureaucracy operating with not just one but many sets of complex systems each falling under different sets of laws: Congress and the alphabet soup of government institutions like the DBM, COA, Ched, DOST, etc., the alumni, the labor union, the student organizations, the fraternities and sororities; even the communist parties have influence here. And the extent of power these different sets exert in and over the university is not at all fixed. It is in flux, fluid and ever changing. It is politics of the highest or lowest order depending on how one looks at it. You have concentrations of power that wax and wane. The university is a metaphor for the country. It is modern and feudal working in a volatile fighting mix. You have overlords that are at times in power, at other times not. Many are made or broken on alliances.
When he was chairman, the Maker of these essays tried always to advise at some appropriate time each new faculty member who came into his division: Be good at what you do professionally. This is your best and perhaps your only defense against whoever will be your enemies. The university does not always reward merit for there are other ways to get by. But since there are not that many people here who are actually good at what they do, being good at what you do will always be recognized if often grudgingly. Thus, if you are a good writer, write. If you are a good artist, do art. If you are a good scientist, then do good science. At all times, make as if you are ready to lose this job. And if you can manage it, be actually ready to lose it. Above all other points of ethics you should go by as a teacher of UP, make this your highest one. There is no guarantee it will work. But even if it doesn’t, by that time, you should have been excellent at whatever it is you do. This is how the university forms you. It is the best and worst you should expect from it.
Indeed, the university is a brainless monster. At times, you cannot help but be mystified at how and why it seems to work all around despite everything. The phrase “all around” is important. The system works and doesn’t work at any given point. The innocent can be victimized while the guilty might go scot-free and move up to a higher position. Dean Avila, by the reckoning of this teacher, is one such victim. And for claiming this openly and in writing as one man, while those about him keep silent, it is conceivable the Maker could follow suit. Who can tell for sure?
But even so, you may recognize from all these that he is only being true to the things he taught and still teaches his students and every new teacher whoever comes near him; And, after 20 or so years a teacher of the university he has by now many. Still, if the worst should happen, he has only himself to blame. He should stay the course. Let him be measured by how he keeps to his own primary principle: At all times be ready to lose your job. In a university where no one is responsible for anything, the least a thinking man should do is be responsible for himself.